Yanira Becerra Ortiz

Yanira Becerra-Ortiz (Santiago de Chile, 1984)

I hold a Bachelor's degree in Spanish Language and Literature and a Master's in Spanish Linguistics from the University of Chile. I am currently a doctoral candidate in Education at the University of Exeter, supported by a scholarship from the Chilean National Research Agency (ANID). My research focuses on the use of metadiscourse in postgraduate academic writing, particularly how it relates to perceptions of students' agency and disciplinary identity.

For over 16 years, I have worked in higher education, teaching academic writing and Spanish as a foreign language at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in public and private universities across Chile. I have a long-standing interest in lexicography, which began with my undergraduate thesis and led to a scholarship from Fundación Carolina to study at the Escuela de Lexicografía Hispánica of the Real Academia Española in Madrid. I later collaborated with the Academia Chilena de la Lengua (Chilean Academy of Language) on the Diccionario Fraseológico del Español de Chile (Phraseological Dictionary of Chilean Spanish).

Alongside my academic research, I work systematically with quantitative and qualitative data analysis tools. I use Python and SPSS for statistical analysis, NVivo and LancsBox for qualitative and corpus-based research, and I am increasingly exploring the use of AI and large language models (LLMs) to support data management, analytical workflows, and research productivity.